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Two Sisters. Two Lives. One Blog.

The Same, But New

K

When A first showed me her post on Newness and asked if I had anything to contribute, I hesitated before passing. Nothing new has really happened since I last wrote – nothing’s changed, I thought.

In a way, this is the truth. I’m still at the same job, working with the same team. Still living in the same city, spending time with the same friends and family. I continue to spend my free time doing the same things as before. An outsider would notice no difference in my day-to-day life. To them, it would be like those scenes in the movies where they show time pass, but the character living through the same routine over and over again.

What’s interesting though, is that my life feels newer than it has in years. In the past five years I’ve experienced being in college, being unemployed, being new to the work force, being in love, being heartbroken and moving to a new city – just to name a few. In the last year, nothing major has happened. And yet, more has changed inside me than ever before.

Newness isn’t always physical. It isn’t always a milestone, either. Sometimes it’s just a mindset. Sometimes it’s just falling asleep to new thoughts and waking up with a different energy and then applying that to whatever comes at you during the day.

It’s taken me a lot to get here. I’m talking years and years of feeling stuck in the same rut despite making so many efforts to shake things up. No matter what happened – I felt the same. The same things caused my heart to flutter, the same things broke me down. But at some point, after the repeated flutters and breaks – after the same sources of joy and sadness – my mind said no more. I can’t pinpoint for you when or how the shift happened. All I know is that I was dealt the same cards, once again, but this time what I did with them was different.

I’ve read hundreds of quotes about how a new mindset is all you need to change any situation at hand. I’ve always believed it, too. But I thought myself too weak to force such a monumental change. What’s funny about this fear is that I’ve never been afraid of physical changes – a new hairstyle, a different career path, not even a different city. But to admit that the way I was viewing situations close to my heart and imagining my future was the root of my problem, was the scariest and most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do. The most difficult, but the most rewarding.

So here’s to new beginnings. For both Jointly and I – exactly the same as the old, but also so entirely different.